(20) The above table, which must be considered as commencing at the 6th and terminating at the 26th year, (the five preceding and five subsequent ones being only given for the purpose of completely tracing all the births to all the marriages throughout,) fully exhibits the subject in every respect. The 6th and 7th years, as do also the 25th and 26th, shew the prolificness of marriages uninfluenced by any accessions whatever, which is three births to each wedding: the seven years from 13 to 19 inclusive, present the same fact under the fully developed operation of one thirtieth part of the weddings being caused by emigration; still, to the discomfiture of the supposition I am controverting, the prolificness of weddings remains three children each. The other sections of the table, viz., from 8 to 12, and from 20 to 24 inclusive, are given to exemplify the effect such accessions had when they first commenced, and which they would produce were they to terminate; the former presenting the average prolificness as somewhat diminished, the other as somewhat increased, but balancing each other, and still giving for the whole number of marriages, whether of natives or in-comers, three children each. Finally, the sum of the births throughout the whole term, compared with that of the marriages, whether those of the strangers are included or whether they are excluded, is the same, three to one. It is the middle section, however, namely, that from the 13th to the 19th year inclusive, in which the native population is annually receiving an equal number of these effective accessions, that demonstrates the fact that so long as the marriages and births of in-comers are registered, they have not the least influence on the average fecundity of marriages: and if the period were extended from the seven years which it includes, to the sixty of which Mr. Malthus

speaks when referring to the registers of Geneva, the result must be obviously unaltered.

(21) The above calculations have been made on the supposition of a stationary population, and an equal number of annual settlers; and it surely will not be contended that if both or either of these are increasing, that the nature of the demonstration is in the slightest degree affected, which is simply this,-that in estimating the prolificness of marriages the birth-place of the parties is a wholly extraneous consideration; and that the elements of the calculation are, only, the number of the marriages, and the number of the births resulting from them.

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CHAPTER XII.

OF THE EFFECTS OF MORTALITIES ON THE NUMBER OF

MARRIAGES.

(1) THE subject of this chapter is of paramount importance in relation to the question at issue, and is one of those upon which the anti-populationists have again fallen into the greatest numerical errors. Its determination will at once furnish a test of the truth or fallacy of the theory they espouse, as well as of the contrary one already partially developed, and about to be more fully explained. It therefore demands our utmost attention, and will repay it. The nature of the inquiry will indeed necessarily invest the mind with serious and gloomy reflections; but these will give place to more cheering impressions, and a light will at length break from the darkness of the tomb, which will enable us to read the principles of eternal benevolence even from the records of mortality.

(2) The position about to be submitted to the test of truth is this; that the number of marriages is influenced by the number of deaths, the latter "making room for1" and "regulating" the proportion of the former, at least "in countries which have been long fully peopled";" which, according to the same authorities, is the condition of most of the nations of Europe; and that even in those only "tolerably well peopled, "death is the most powerful of all the encouragements "to marriage." This idea is repeated in every variety of phrase, and its truth perpetually re-asserted by the 1 Malthus, Essay on Population, p. 244. 2 Ibid., p. 244. 3 Ibid., p. 247.]

advocates of the prevailing theory of population: many arguments in its favour have been remodelled, and some, I understand, entirely withdrawn, but this has invariably kept its place, and is to the present hour represented as its principal demonstration; while the conclusions deduced from it are as revolting as the doctrine attempted to be established.

(3) But a reference to facts will enable me to prove not only that the assumption in question is not true, but that the very converse of it is so; namely, that an excess of deaths is so far from causing a proportionate increase of marriages, that it occasions a diminution in them. An appeal, not to particular or garbled documents, but to those which Mr. Malthus himself has selected for a contrary purpose, and the whole of them, will decide this question, not according to some abstract and elaborate calculation, but by the simplest rules of arithmetic.

(4) Nor will the conclusion, opposite as it will be found to the dogmas now delivered with such persevering confidence, be otherwise than such as ought to be reasonably anticipated, if we sufficiently advert to the structure of civilized society, or to the experience of human beings in every age of the world. Before entering, therefore, upon the numerical demonstrations contemplated, that moral evidence may be well appealed to, which the very nature of the subject amply affords, and which is, of itself, abundantly sufficient to determine the question. If, as the antipopulationists contend, Europe, generally speaking, is already over-peopled; if all the avocations of life are pre-occupied and full; and if there is a constant tendency in its people to a still further increase, beyond the means of subsistence; and admitting, at the same time, what is often insultingly denied, that

human beings are distinguished from the brutes by the exercise of forethought and prudence; I say, allow ing all this, and it can hardly be denied, but that any considerable and unusual diminution of the inha bitants of any place, by deaths, would be the signal for an immediate and proportionate increase in the number of its marriages. But if, on the other hand, the world is not over-peopled, with reference to the provision it is capable of producing, as the effect of human industry; if mankind, in consequence of that mutual dependance by which Nature has ordained they should be united together, become necessary to each other, in proportion to their numbers, especially in a state of civilization, and thereby, in the true sense of the term, make room for each other; if this increase does not occasion a loss or diminution in the individual shares of the necessaries and comforts of existence, but is the means of securing and enlarging them; and if these consequences are manifest in the general experience of mankind, then will a replenished state of population, and not a season of mortality, be that in which the greater number of marriages will take place. This argument is insisted upon in another place, but it may be repeated, on the present occasion, that in all the pursuits of human industry, in all the avocations of social existence, human beings create employment for each other; and that not to some limited and arbitrary extent, which supposition is the grand error of the system I am opposing; but, in proportion to their numbers, and even in a super-proportion, the habits of an increasing community creating those artificial wants which, in the progress of civilization, are constantly becoming necessaries of life: numbers of people, therefore, as De Foe rightly argues, encouraging employment far beyond that which